


i don't think they're ready for the fall

by archetypes



Series: the universe is you and i (not those stars in the sky) [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec's past, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Bad Parent Robert Lightwood, Gen, Mass Effect AU, No malec in this part but !!! I will deliver, Past Fic, Slurs, Space AU, kid alec
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archetypes/pseuds/archetypes
Summary: some of alec's past before he became the commander he is today. (centers around his relationship with his mother and father).





	i don't think they're ready for the fall

**Author's Note:**

> a short 3 chaptered part of the series dedicated to alec's childhood ! i will probably update this randomly and write more malec centric parts of the series at the same time.

_Penhallow Medical Center, 2162._

The first of the five senses that Alec had regained was his hearing, this string of beeps and mechanical white noise making it hard to focus on anything else but the throbbing in his head. His small body felt like a giant bruise, his purple lids heavy and his jaw slack with the oxygen mask giving him life when, apparently, his body hadn’t been able to do it itself.

Hazel eyes slowly peeled open, the bright light of the open concept hospital room shining through the window and landing on him like the sunlight was supposed to be his only source of vitamins. Alec didn’t remember what was going on, his mother had told him that he was going to the hospital because he had to, because that’s what their people did at his age. His mother said this would make him strong, that this would make his father proud of him when he came back home. Why did making your parents care about you hurt so much?

The little boy groaned, this whine pulling down on his throat and making the rest of his body stir to life. He clenched his fists, bunching up the scratchy fabric of a thick hospital blanket while his fingertips dug into the hard mattress. “Momma,” he mumbled, the mask muffling his voice and making it difficult to speak properly. “Momma!” He called again, lifting his arm and accidentally tugging at the IV, causing him to cry out softly in pain. A kicked dog.

He remembered what his father had told him about pain. That _it wasn’t real, Alec_. That _only you can decide if something hurts you or not. Don’t let anything hurt you_.

So he breathed the way he taught him, deep breaths, in through his mouth out through his nose. Alec learned, like when he accidentally cut his hand open on one of his father’s knives, that it didn’t make the pain go away. It didn’t stop it from making his muscles tear or his skin bleed, but remembering what his father told him, it always made him stop crying. He didn’t ever want his father to yell at him again, to say that he was weak. To say that he wasn’t going to be good enough. It hurt his feeling when his father said those things and Alec tried the breathing techniques for those but it didn’t make him stop crying. That pain was different yet he couldn’t find out why.

Messy black hair rubbed against the pillow and poked him in the eyes as he slowly turned his head towards the door, that too was glass and he could see through it. He could even hear through it. The sound of the hospital staff making him curious as to why he wasn’t being checked on. He didn’t know how hospitals worked but he thought the nurses knew right away when he was awake. Maybe they had cameras? Moving pictures of Alec stirring to life?

His tried gaze darted around as much as he could see from the hallway, a glimpse of long dark hair and a figure he instinctively knew to be his mother’s, catching his attention and making his heart speed up. What was she doing out there? Shouldn’t she be telling him how proud she was of doing this for her and dad?

“Momma,” he tried to catch her attention but it seemed to be useless, because even if she could hear him she wasn’t turning. Didn’t even look over in his direction.

Alec’s short neck craned even further as he realized she had been talking to someone, her muffled voice not loud enough to make out her words but he could see the man across from her once he put the effort into it. It was dad! Momma had told Alec that he wouldn’t be back for months but he must have heard the good news and was thrilled; he was here to love Alec!

“Dad!” Alec attempted another cry for attention, his head aching with the position he tried to hold and eventually his body forced him to slump back down.

Alec’s father must have seen him, this flash of concern shooting across his face as he looked into Alec’s hospital room. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, like the boy lying in the bed wasn’t Alec at all. The look made his own eyes blow wide, but he smiled anyway, his small hand rising off of the bed and trying to wave his father in his direction. The reaction he got was the opposite, the elder Lightwood backing away from his wife and rushing even further down the hall, so Alec could no longer see him anymore.

Alec froze, hazel had caught a glimpse of his hand now that he was more awake, more lively and conscious. His skin was paler than usual. His eyes travelled along his body now, trying to find the source of that invisible ache, and when he pulled back the blanket he started gasping, the sound of his heart monitor speeding up with the panic pounding on his chest and making a noise louder than any of his previous attempts to have his family pay attention to him.

There were thick red lines all over his chest, even one that spanned all the way down to his belly button, and a few were on his upper arms as well, splattered with dark purple bruises that made every stapled and stitched line appear a hundred times more painful. He took one of his small first fingers and pressed against one of the bruises littering his chest and he felt tears well up immediately. “Mom!” He screamed, thrashing slightly as he kicked the blanket off of him with all of his strength. “Mom! Mom! Help me!”

Finally, he was listened to, an older man with visible runes on his neck and wrists entered the room in a pearly white coat and a clipboard in hand, Alec’s father following closely behind while his mother was still outside, though now she was right by the door. Her head was in her hands as she watched Alec through her fingers, a grimace on her face. 

“Alec, calm down,” His father said as he came to his bedside, warm hands timidly pressed down on Alec’s shoulder, as it seemed to be the only place on his body that wasn’t bruised at the time. “I’m right here.”

“What’s happening?” He screeched as he fought to tug at the mask on his face but his father yanked his hands away, keeping them down against the bed even as Alec cried out in pain at the harsh contact. He didn’t loosen his grip as he laid still, tears falling down Alec’s cheeks as he whimpered.

“How did this happen! What did you do wrong?” Robert had asked the doctor in an accusatory tone, yet still kept that pressure on his son’s arms. “It’s a simple procedure, even you said so. How the hell does pure angel blood get rejected by a Nephilim’s body?”

“Well, Mr. Lightwood, there could be many causes but… we think that Alec might have been too young, otherwise sometimes the body just rejects the blood like a piercing. Alec had hemolytic anemia and acute renal failure caused by the blood transfusions. As you can see,” He pointed to Alec’s chest where the longest scar resided, the boy still panting heavily and making it seem like it could pop open at any moment. “We had to go in after his body was under so much stress that he went into SCA-”

“Which is?”

“Sudden cardiac arrest. His heart stopped and after bringing him back with the defibrillator we had to go in once it wasn’t returning to normal rhythm. He is on medication now to keep it stabilized and we will need him to stay here for at least a week to monitor his condition.”

“Why couldn’t you heal these… marks?” Robert gestured with a curt nod of his head to the inflictions littered all over Alec’s body.

“He’s too young for an iratze and applying a large dose of medigel would have shocked his system even further. We can attempt to treat them in a few days if you’d like-”

“Is there something wrong with him?” Robert interrupted, seemingly uninterested with this topic of conversation.

“…Do you mean other than his heart or his kidneys?”

“No, I mean is there something wrong with his blood? Every Lightwood has had this procedure for generations and this is the first time this has happened. What the hell is wrong with him?”

Alec started to panic, his arms twitching under his father’s grasp and he stared up at the man who raised him like he desperately needed to know what they were talking about. He hadn’t understood what they had said, whatever was wrong with him, he didn’t know. He heard that his heart stopped, and Alec’s mom had taught him that that’s what it means to die. “Did I die?” He cried, tiny body quivering with the uncertainty of it all.

“No, you didn’t die, and you’re not going to, I promise.” The doctor spoke softly to him, leaning in and trying to smile something encouraging. “Mr. Lightwood, I’m going to forward a few things to your private terminal for you and your wife to sign off on and then we can talk.”

Robert had agreed with a reluctant nod of his head, finally pulling off of Alec to follow the doctor to the door. “I’ll be right back,” he called out to his son, not even bothering to look back at him to gauge his reaction on being left alone again.

“Wait, dad!” The boy called, trying to sit up in the bed, waiting to be able to jump out and follow after him, but upon seeing the marks on his skin it was like they hurt even more than before. Or maybe if was the fear of his heart breaking down on him like he thought the doctor had said.

He was ignored again and the door closed quietly behind his father, who went right outside of the hospital room and stood next to his mom now.

“Don’t look at _me_ like that, the Truebloods have had the same procedure done and it’s never hurt me.” Alec could hear his mother speak now that they were closer to his room, only muffled enough to make him have to really focus on what they were saying. Were they going to talk about him? Would they please tell him what was happening if he didn’t have the pure angel blood like his parents had wanted?

“Well it’s not me either, Maryse.”

“Then it’s just _him_ ,” his mother pointed in his general direction and the little boy frowned. “There’s just something wrong with him, tell the doctor to run some tests, maybe he’s got a disease.”

“What disease would a six year old get that isn’t genetic?”

“Well then maybe he’s retarded, I don’t know!” His mother sounded distressed, this panicked yet agitated edge to her voice that made Alec flinch. He wasn’t stupid… was he?

“That doesn’t have anything to do with his blood, even if he was… _slow_ it wouldn’t affect him like that.”

“Get the doctor to find a new batch… put different blood in him because there’s no way his body wouldn’t take it. He’s a Lightwood, dammit, we don’t fail like that. Do you know how embarrassing this is going to be, how bad we will look?”

“Hey, stop it,” he put his hands on Maryse’s arms, squeezing tight like he was about to shake a violent amount of sense into her, his teeth gritting together. “We have Isabelle… we have Isabelle, okay?”

His mom scoffed, “Sure, in four years.”

“Six, I think we should wait a few more… the doctor thinks Alec just wasn’t strong enough yet.”

“All of our family has gotten it at six,” she spat, her jaw tightening and making chills run up Alec’s spine. “More evidence that it’s just _him_.”

He felt that familiar sting. Why would they be saying these things about him? Don’t they know those words make him cry into his pillow at night, this strange stinging in his eyes that was unlike any other kind of physical pain? He did this for them, he was promised that it would make him strong, why is his mother saying that it made him weak?

“Robert,” his mother breathed, knocking his hands off of her arms and folding them across her chest instead. “How is he supposed to do everything we planned for him if he can’t even do this right?”

“This doesn’t prove anything right now, okay? We have years of training… he can do it.”

“You don’t know that,” her words were venomous and snide.

“Neither do you!” He spat back, getting in her face for only a second before looking back into the room through the glass door. 

When his mother finally looked at him too he ripped the oxygen mask off of his face finally, throwing it away and the elastic band brought it back to its machine. “Momma!” He yelled, his bruised fruit of a body making several protests in the form of pain shooting through his nerves as he tried to sit up again.

Maryse mumbled a swear word under her breath before shoving past his dad and pushing the door to the room open. Her high heels were a welcomed sound, one of familiarity, as she stalked towards her son. He shot his hands out for her affection, wishing to be held in a way he hasn’t been for at least a year or more. They had told him to stop being such a baby and so he hadn’t asked for something so _childish_ until now. The little boy was scared and he wished for his mother to bring him comfort and love.

“Stop it you’re going to tear out your IV, Alec.” She swatted just once at his hand in warning before pushing them down against the bed and letting go like he didn’t deserve her touch.

“Momma, what’s wrong with me?” He asked her, his bottom lip trembling and his words waterlike.

“I don’t know,” she kept her tone hushed. “We’re trying to figure that out.”

He lost her eye contact then, her body pivoting towards the back window and her eyes glued to whatever was so interesting on the outside. He had seen that look before and he wondered why this meant what she and his father had said the last time he’d seen that grave look.

“Does this mean I’m not doing good enough?” They had warned him about this, that he would fail them like this.

“Yes,” she was cold, and his father looked like he wanted to intervene but last second he shut his mouth, joining his mother in looking out the window rather than meeting the teary eyed gaze of their six year old.

“I’m sorry, Momma.”


End file.
